June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Dubai’s benchmark stock index
slumped to its lowest in more than a month, leading declines in
the Middle East, amid an emerging-market rout after China
signaled it will maintain efforts to curb credit.

The DFM General Index lost 1.9 percent to close at 2,255.97
in Dubai. The measure, the second-best performer this year after
Ghana’s among 93 benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg, plunged as
much as 5.1 percent as volume fell to about a third the 30-day
average. Abu Dhabi’s ADX General Index retreated 1.1 percent.

“The higher you rise the faster you fall,” Mark Watts,
head of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi’s asset management group,
said by phone today. “The United Arab Emirates has had a
stupendous year-to-date performance, so it’s only natural that
if people are looking to lighten up on emerging-market exposure
they will target the ones that have risen the highest.”

Emerging-market stocks tumbled to a one-year low, with the
MSCI Emerging Markets Index falling 1.4 percent at 2:36 pm in
Dubai. China’s shares lost the most in four years after the
central bank signaled it will maintain efforts to curb
speculative lending and Goldman Sachs said a cash squeeze is
hurting growth.

“The fact the market recouped 50 percent of its losses
during the session is an encouraging sign that it could find a
bottom for the time being,” Fadi Al Said, senior fund manager
at ING Investment Management in Dubai, said by e-mail.
“Emerging market and international managers are locking in
profits made in the U.A.E. markets after a great performance.”

Dubai’s benchmark is still up 39 percent this year, while
Abu Dhabi’s benchmark has rallied 34 percent.